Research Group on Collaborative Work in Virtual Environments

Description

Changes due to globalisation, the technological revolution and digitalisation are encouraging organisations to develop new forms of collaborative work through virtual teams and communities. These collaborative tools are relevant business strategies as they allow for improved learning and knowledge management and, therefore, contribute to making organisations more innovative, more visible and more competitive.

The characteristics of collaborative work have recently changed as users of geographically dispersed virtual teams or communities have the possibility of combining different technological applications to respond to the demands of the project or task they are carrying out (e.g. wiki, forum, social/corporate network, etc.). In this sense, important changes occur in the nature of the relationships between users, in the processes related to the resolution of the task and its performance (e.g. identification, sense of community, trust, leadership, conflict, productivity, quality of knowledge...) that need to be addressed.

The aim of our research group is to create ‘frontier knowledge’ about the effects that collaborative technologies have on individual and collective well-being from a basic perspective, which is then transferred to the applied context of businesses. This way, we analyse the functioning of virtual teams and communities that work in dynamic environments with complex tasks with a double purpose: a) to develop training strategies and improve their effectiveness, and b) to offer guidelines for the efficient design of these collaborative tools.

Virtual teams (VTs). During the last decade, the study of VTs has consolidated as an extensive area of research with important results and relevant heuristic models have been developed to explain the key aspects of the successful functioning of these groups. The research carried out in recent years by different research teams, including ours, has focused on the differential study of these teams with respect to those that communicate in a conventional way, i.e. "face to face". However, it is now known that these virtual teams have their own idiosyncrasies and, therefore, from a psychosocial and positive perspective, it is advocated to analyse the aspects that influence their well-being and performance. The specific way in which the virtual team is structured (emergence of subgroups according to the processes of social categorisation) as well as having emotional skills to optimise its resources (training in emotion management) are shaped as areas of interest when developing our research.

Furthermore, the cooperation of teams in today's organisations extends to the exchange of knowledge in virtual communities, interest groups in professional social networks or in internal company networks, which extends our research towards the analysis of the process of sharing knowledge in virtual communities. In this research context, the efficient design of virtual communities of practice with a view to improving their sustainability is of particular interest. These can be defined as groups created by the organisation, with visibility of its members, with common purposes and oriented towards sharing knowledge on web platforms. In this sense, our research group aims to investigate the factors that favour their effective and appropriate use for social innovation and knowledge management.

Goals CT

To investigate the functioning of virtual teams and communities and develop intervention strategies to improve their well-being and effectiveness.

To study the impact that the structure of teams (fragmentation of teams based on identity vs. non-fragmentation) has on the well-being and results of the team and its members in VTs.

To analyse the impact that training in collective emotion management has on the well-being and results of virtual teams in different training sessions, in a longitudinal way.

To determine whether there are differences in well-being and effectiveness between fragmented teams that have received training in emotion management and those that have not.

To analyse the mediating or modulating role that personal and motivational variables have in the relationship between the structure of the teams (with and without fragmentation) and well-being and results at an individual and collective level.

Line 1: To study the impact that management practices carried out by work centres have on the effectiveness of virtual communities (support in training, in setting objectives, etc.).

Line 2: To study the role played by personal factors (self-efficacy, predisposition to the use of technology, compatibility) and motivational factors (identification and confidence), from a longitudinal approach, and their impact on the results obtained.

Line 3: To study the structure, patterns, evolution and dynamics of interactions between community members to identify key members for success and innovation through the use of Social Network Analysis (NSA), as well as its impact on the exchange of actions to improve the well-being of users and professionals.

Research lines

Well-being and performance in virtual teams: subgroups and emotional competencies
The general objective of this line of research is to analyse the individual and collective well-being of the VTs, as well as the impact that the creation of subgroups and the development of the group's emotional management can have on both their well-being and their effectiveness. To do so, a longitudinal experimental study is developed, where four different experimental conditions are considered, as a result of the combination of the two central variables: creation or not of subgroups and training or not in emotional management. An interactive platform is used with different applications created ad-hoc for this purpose. All the groups are made up of four people and work over five working sessions solving tasks of an individual and collective nature. The results will contribute to the design of healthy virtual teams, with members with high well-being and at the same time effective. As well as the design of specific training programmes in emotional management for virtual collaborative contexts.
Virtual communities, social innovation and knowledge management
To study virtual communities and networks as a mechanism for social innovation and a way of managing and sharing knowledge. On the one hand, organisational management strategies (facilitating conditions, existing rules for sharing or support from the community manager) are analysed, as well as structural factors (leadership and prestige of the community) and their influence on the results for users and professionals (sense of community, quality of knowledge, proactive participation, satisfaction, innovation...). In addition, the influence that technological (navigation, interactivity), personal (expectations of results, self-efficacy) and/or motivational (identification, reciprocity and confidence) factors may have on efficient functioning is also studied. To this end, the perceptions of users or professionals of virtual communities of practice in relation to the aforementioned variables are analysed. The results allow us to outline a set of guidelines oriented towards the efficient design and optimal management of these virtual communities.

Management